4 Tips for Prioritizing Your (Food) Goals This Year, According to Emma Lovewell
Basically, what I’m saying is that Lovewell accomplishes a *lot* in her daily life. As we ramp up into 2025 and I’m finally starting to think about what I want to achieve this year (yep, I’m one of those late-in-the-month-resolutions types), why not get advice from someone who’s already with me virtually while I hit my fitness goals? During a recent chat with Lovewell, she told Well+Good all about the joys of grocery shopping with a baby, getting your protein needs, and the importance of taking time to listen to your body.
1. Know when to pivot
Getting into a steady routine is great. Studies show that creating daily habits can be beneficial for cognitive function, and incorporating changes can lead to reduced risk for many diseases overall. However, we’re human, and life can get in the way.
Sometimes, the thing that worked for you for years suddenly stops being as effective or, more commonly, stops appealing to you and your needs the same way. This happened to Lovewell during the first trimester of her pregnancy. “I had crazy food aversions…but one was chicken and vegetables, basically what I eat for a lot of my meals,” says Lovewell. “I found myself asking: What do I eat now?” Since this meal staple was a go-to of hers as a fitness pro, as lean proteins and vegetables together create a complete protein—amino acids from chicken, and fiber plus nutrients from veggies—there was a need to revamp her protein intake.
“I was really focusing on eating a lot of protein early on in my day,” says Lovewell. “I would have two boiled eggs, a siggi’s yogurt, and already I was at 28 grams of protein.” That then became a new routine to ensure she was getting what she needed, while also adapting to a ‘new normal.’Though, she admits, is “excited to go back to cooking in the way I always have.”
2. Draw inspiration from different sources
Lovewell *loves* to cook, she admits, so seeking out new avenues for that is usually fun for her. One of those avenues is meal prep. “I’m always experimenting, but I'm not a very rigid meal prepper,” she says. “I tend to get sort of bored if I eat the same thing too many times.” By giving herself the grace to seek out what she likes, it opens up more ways for her to find inspiration when she’s cooking and truly enjoy adding structure to meal times. “For me, I wake up and I'm excited to eat—I’m thrilled to make breakfast,” she says.
Now that Lovewell is a new mom, even dinner looks a little bit different these days. “To leave the house to go out to dinner with a baby is a whole different thing,” she says. As she’s not going out to eat as much, Lovewell has turned to focusing on making really good meals at home. “I’m definitely cooking postpartum more than ever before,” she says.
That includes searching for the best ingredients and trying to be more creative in her daily cooking. “So now I think: Ooh what was that Thai dish I had at that restaurant that I loved?” she muses. “I'm going to make it myself.”
3. Find joy in working on the goal
Now, Lovewell isn’t just thinking about the way she eats, but also the way her baby eats. “My baby loves grocery shopping, thankfully, so we just walk down the aisles, and she makes funny noises at all the things; it’s so cute,” she gushes.That time spent together takes an activity that Lovewell has had to adjust to these days: Eating at home more, and cooking to make meal time feel as interesting as a dinner out would.
Additionally, a lot of new parents worry about when to introduce their kids to new foods, but for Lovewell, she’s turned it into an adventure for the two of them. “Oh my god I think about it all the time,” she admits. “She’s probably two months away from eating real food but I think about it all the time.”
Textures and allergens are the two main food concepts she’s ready to introduce and test, and she already knows exactly what foods to start with. “I’m not worried about my child liking bananas, I'm worried about my child liking broccoli,” Lovewell states. “And curry, are you gonna be ok with curry?”
4. Listen to your body
Something Lovewell appreciated throughout her pregnancy was having her doctors give her guidance around exactly how much of certain vitamins and minerals she needed to support her body during and after pregnancy—especially around her protein needs. However, she recognizes with the boon of nutritional advice online, that it’s not a one-size-fits-all situation. “I can’t just say flat out, ‘Oh, you have to eat xyz,’ because every body is different,” she says. “But, if it helps people be a little more aware of what they're consuming, that's great.”
With all the online chit chat, it can feel as if there’s so much advice that we have to follow in order to be a productive, successful, and overall ‘healthy’ person. But, for so many, what feeling good in your body looks like doesn’t look like anyone else’s version of doing something good for yourself. “Sometimes more is more, but sometimes more is distracting,” says Lovewell. Essentially, take what works for you, and don’t worry about what someone else’s “normal” looks like, because we all get to the finish line in our own ways.
For Lovewell, this looks like adding small, incremental changes that she can adjust to over time, instead of throwing everything at her routine all at once. She quantifies this as a dip in the water. “Some people like jumping in the ocean all the way in, some people like getting their toes wet, and I'm somebody who just likes to get my toes wet and gradually go in,” she says. “It is possible to win at your wellness goals, and succeed in your goals and routines by just doing less.”
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